In one of today's main features on Gamasutra, the latest 'Going Mobile' column from former GameSpot Mobile and Wireless Gaming Review chief editor Steve Palley discusses why university campuses could be the perfect place to breed the next viral hit for the mobile gaming market.
Steve, who is now heading up mobile game consulting firm
Foci Mobile, comments of this intriguing concept:
"Mobile games designers have been feverishly trying to recreate this experience--the totally insane, virally propagated, mass-market explosion that will change video games forever. We’ve witnessed the potency of a mobile content meme unleashed in the irritating amphibian person of Crazy Frog, who took most of the world by storm a couple years ago. Why hasn’t something similar happened in mobile games? It’s not necessarily because there haven’t been enough awesome products. I’ve played several valid candidates for the position of the Next Big Thing over the years.
I think the failure is due to the fact that most people simply aren’t used to obtaining mobile games, let alone playing them. At the moment, they don’t generate much conversation among friends, unless your friends are all in the mobile games industry. Nevertheless, once you add the base ingredients to the cohesive social medium of a college campus, the germ will almost certainly take. Can you imagine a download link to a hit mobile game circulating through campuses on successive waves of text messages?"
You can now
read the full Gamasutra column on the subject for more of Palley's insight, including more on why this concept is beginning to make a lot of sense (no registration required, please feel free to link to this article from external websites).
